The resurfacer is the machine that shaves the ice and lays new water, and it logs every lap, the blade depth and the water used, because ice is money. It is parked in its bay at close with the key out. At three it logs a lap. One, the full pad, blade down, water on. In the morning the ice is fresh, the way it leaves it, and in the fresh ice, from end to end, are the marks of one skater who went round after it.
I am the ice technician at a rink, and the resurfacer is the thing I am trusted with, and the thing I do not drive at three.
The machine.
It shaves a layer off the ice, picks up the snow, and lays a film of hot water that freezes flat. It logs each lap with the time, the blade depth and the litres, because a rink's ice is its money and a bad sheet is a cancelled session. At close I do the last cut, park it in its bay with the key out and the water off, and lock up.
At three it does a lap.
The lap.
One. The full pad. Blade at a depth I do not use, a little deeper than I cut, the way an older technician cut when the machines were heavier. Water on. The log has it as a complete lap at the speed the machine does when it is driven well, with the turns at the ends tight, which is the hard part.
In the morning the machine is in its bay, key out, and the water tank is down a lap's worth, and the snow tank has snow in it, and the ice is fresh.
The marks.
On the fresh ice, end to end, are the marks of one skater. Not hockey, not a child. Figure blades. Long edges, deep, a pattern that goes the length of the pad and back in loops and turns, and ends, at centre ice, in the small scatter of marks a skater leaves when they stop and stand, and then nothing. No marks to the boards. No marks to the gate. They stop at centre and they do not leave.
I have skated. I know what those marks cost to make. Whoever made them was good.
What has been checked.
The machine, by the maker's engineer, who found it in order and logged the lap at three himself from his hotel on the monitoring app and rang me, at three, to ask who was driving, and I said nobody, and he did not ring again.
The rink, at three, by me, at the boards. The machine came out of its bay. I heard it start. It came through the gate onto the ice and it went round, with the blade down and the water steaming behind it in the cold, and the seat was empty, and it did the turns at the ends the way I cannot do them, and it went back through the gate to its bay and stopped.
And then, on the wet ice, before it had set, the marks came. I watched them come. A skater's marks, appearing on the surface from nothing, at a skater's speed, the long edges, the loops, the turns, the sound of blades on fresh ice, which is a sound I would know in my sleep, and no skater, and the marks went to centre and stopped, and stood, and the sound stopped, and the ice set.
Who.
The rink has had skaters for sixty years and I did not know where to start. I asked the oldest coach. She said, without stopping lacing her boots, that's the night ice.
She said that when she was a girl, the rink had let its best skaters use the ice after the last cut, late, on their own, for nothing, if the technician was willing to do an extra lap for them, and the technician had been willing for one girl, every night, for years, because the girl was going to be something, and she had been, nearly, and then she had not, because of a fall on ice that was not this ice, somewhere else, at a competition, and she had not skated after, and had died young.
The technician had gone on doing the lap at three for a while, the coach said, out of habit, and then had stopped, and then had died too.
They are both back. He cuts. She skates.
What is done about it.
The lap at three is on the log and the water is on the bill and the manager has asked me why the machine is doing a lap nobody books, and I have said it is a maintenance cut, which is a thing, and he has said fine.
What I do.
I look after the ice.
I stopped doing the last cut at close. I leave the ice rough, the way it is after a public session, because a rough sheet is what she would have skated on if he had not cut it for her, and I want the lap at three to be needed.
It is. The machine goes round at three and lays glass, and she skates on it, and the marks are there in the morning, and the marks have changed. They used to stop at centre. They go on now. Round, a lap of the boards, the slow lap a skater does at the end, the cool down, with one hand out to the boards, and the marks go to the gate, and through it, and onto the rubber, where blades do not mark, and stop.
She is getting off the ice. She has started to. And the machine, since she has, does its lap a little faster, the way you drive when the ice is going to be used by somebody who is going to come off it afterwards and say thank you, and I have heard the thank you, once, at the gate, at three, in the cold, and I said, any time, because that is what he would have said.